Monday, 19 January 2015

Easypaisa has become the first and the only branchless banking service to begin the collection of Traffic Challan payments for the Traffic Police department in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK).

Easypaisa has partnered with A2Z e-payments, an e-payments service provider, to enable the traffic violation offenders to deposit their traffic challan fines at selected Easypaisa shops in the province.

Through Easypaisa, paying for traffic challans is now extremely convenient and transparent:

The offender needs to visit the nearest designated Easypaisa shop with the issued Traffic Challan.

The Easypaisa merchant will collect the fine and processes the transaction on an installed POS machine that generates a physical receipt for the merchant and the offender followed by SMS receipts on their mobile phone.

The offender can now collect his documents from the Traffic Police Center by submitting a physical receipt of the challan payment transaction.

Easypaisa as a responsible corporate citizen believes in collaborating with public institutions to facilitate the people of Pakistan. Even though Easypaisa has an extensive G2P disbursement portfolio, this is the first instance of a Branchless Banking service facilitating payments from the people to the Government.

With Easypaisa, traffic penalty holders can submit their traffic challans even on bank/public holidays with accessible locations cutting down on travel costs and time constraints. Subsequently, the Traffic Enforcement agencies benefit from better traffic challan management, a comprehensive database of offenders, the elimination of paper associated costs and reduced corruption or embezzlement of funds.

Easypaisa is working hard with other Government bodies and planning to expand this service nationwide through the extensive network of 55,000 Easypaisa agents across 800 cities in Pakistan.

On Sunday, the government blocked services through mobile apps Viber and Tango over security concerns.

The voice and messaging services were reportedly used by vandals earlier this month to coordinate criminal activity without being traced by police.

The move came after more than 20 people were killed following a call by opposition leader Khaleda Zia for a nationwide transport blockade.

Zia, who has been seeking a fresh election under a non-partisan caretaker administration, called the strike after she was prevented from joining a rally on the first anniversary of the election that she boycotted.

Police on Monday withdrew a security cordon from in front of her private office in Dhaka to apparently allow her to move freely.

Zia has been saying at her office since January 3, which she called a confinement.

The management of Shaukat Khanum Hospital, Peshawar recently started a campaign for collecting donations to help with establishment costs. The campaign included an SMS drive, which has run into issues as PTA has banned it without providing any reason.

Through the SMS campaign, people could easily donate PKR 20 by sending a blank SMS to 7770. Now, the message simply fails to go through and a ‘Message Not Sent’ error is shown.

As you might already be aware, Imran Khan recently appeared on a TV channel to kickstart the donation process for the Peshawar branch of Shaukat Khanum, which is supposed to be operational by the end of the year. The telethon managed to attract over PKR 65 crore in 3 hours.

Speaking on the PTA ban on SMS donations, Imran Khan said that PTA should be facilitating charities like these instead of banning them.

Sunday, 18 January 2015

As it has turned out to be, mobile phone users will have to pay Rs. 10 per CNIC for re-verification of SIMs of each operator, we have checked with sources.

As you may know that SIM re-verification exercise is about to begin in a day or two at most and telecom operators are given 90 days for re-verification of 103 million SIMs.

While finalized SOPs from Pakistan Telecommunication Authority are scheduled to be issued today evening, we have confirmed with sources that end users will have to bear a verification fee of Rs. 10 per CNIC per transaction.

For example if a customer goes to Service Centre, Franchise or a retailer of one company and re-verifies his/her all SIMs for this particular company than he will have to pay Rs.10 per this operator.

Similarly, if he goes to another operator for SIM re-verification, then he will have to give another Rs. 10 for re-verification of all SIMs of this second operator, and so on.

If a customer goes to Service Centre, Franchise or a retailer of one company and re-verifies his/her all SIMs for this particular company than he will have to pay Rs. 10 per this operator

Telecom operators say that this Rs. 10 per transaction is processing fee that will be given to retailers as an incentive. They say that there is no other way to keep retailers engaged with re-verification process as otherwise they might simply refuse to re-verify customers due to the hassle involved in the process.

Microsoft Devices Pakistan recently collaborated with Nestle Pakistan, according to which Nestle chose the Windows Phone platform to provide support to their field force teams. Nestle explored different platforms that provide field force solutions and integration with backend systems and selected Lumia 630, after stringent deliberations.

The Windows Phone platform will provide integration to Nestle’s sales teams with backend systems such as ordering, inventory management and security solutions. The WP platform was finalized after it met Nestle’s expectations and performed seamless and faster application syncing versus other platforms. Moreover, Windows Phone OS provided a remarkable user experience and emerged as a clear winner against its competitors.

Commenting at the induction of Microsoft Lumia smartphones, James Rutherfoord, Vice President, Microsoft Devices North Africa, Levant and Near East said:

Microsoft Lumia smartphones offer a unique user experience and seamlessly integrate with various business applications, making them perfect for business. Therefore, the Windows Phone platform is the best choice for corporations looking to gain a business edge in their respective industries and providing outstanding business support to their teams. I further laud Telenor Pakistan for their support to this collaboration between Microsoft Devices and Nestle Pakistan.

According to the agreement, Microsoft Lumia will provide 3,500 Lumia 630 smartphones to Nestle Pakistan, which will be supported by Telenor Pakistan as the telecom partner.